Liz Fong-Jones

“We have to stand up for what’s right and we have to do that in an intersectional way. We can’t just stand up for our selves, we have to build that solidarity. We don’t have the numbers alone. If we work together we can actually accomplish change.”

Liz Fong-Jones is a developer advocate, labor and ethics organizer, and Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) with 15+ years of experience. She is an advocate at Honeycomb.io for the SRE and Observability communities, and previously was an SRE working on products ranging from the Google Cloud Load Balancer to Google Flights.

She lives in Brooklyn with her wife, metamours, and a Samoyed/Golden Retriever mix, and in San Francisco and Seattle with her other partners. She plays classical piano, leads an EVE Online alliance, and advocates for transgender rights as a board member of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Kim Crayton: 00:00 Today’s episode is supported by Tito. Tito is a design-led event software that makes it super easy to manage tickets for events. The product aims to be clean, simple and intuitive to use while the business aims to be sustainable at the go, driven by people and principles rather than growth at all costs. To learn more, visit their website at ti.to

Kim Crayton:00:55Hello everyone and welcome to today’s episode of the #causeascene podcast. My guest today is someone I’ve been watching and following and have been admiring for a while, so I’m really excited about having her on the show. So I’ll let her introduce herself.

Liz Fong-Jones: 01:09 Hi, I’m Liz Fong-Jones and I am a developer advocate, Site Reliability Engineer, and an advocate for employee rights and for ethical product design.

Kim Crayton: 01:21 So we’re going to start this right off. And so could you tell me why is it important to cause a scene and how are you causing a scene, Liz?

Liz Fong-Jones: 01:28 I think it’s important to cause a scene because the status quo is just not working for some people. And I think that we have to make sure that the world is more fair and that means that we have to disrupt the status quo. And the way that I’m disrupting the status quo, in part, is if you all saw the Google Walkout from last November when 20,000 Google employees and contractors walked out of the Google offices worldwide to protest sexual harassment. What I want to see is I want to see more of that. And in order to see more of that, it means that people that don’t necessarily feel safe or supported to go on strike can go on strike, right? The people that uh, are on H-1B visas, people that are contractors who are afraid that their bosses are going to retaliate against them, right? Like all of these groups of people can’t necessarily easily engage in industrial action. And that’s something I want to support. So I actually donated my last paycheck from Google, uh, in order to start a fund, which is going to help workers at tech companies, specifically Google, including the contractors and vendors, to go on strike, uh, in order to make sure that they have the support that they need in order to fight for better working conditions and fight for better products.

Kim Crayton: 02:46 So I saw that, um, um, you’re, you did an interview and then I saw this is not the first time you’ve, you’ve donated money, right?

Liz Fong-Jones: 02:58No, I donate money to a variety of causes. In particular, the one thing that I’m most passionate about is I’m a trans woman of color and I turned out fine, I think. But I know that a lot of my trans siblings are really struggling. So the primary thing that I know to donate money towards is I donate money towards making sure that trans people can not just survive but thrive. And that means, so I support causes like the Transgender Law Center, which is suing the government over the illegal detention of trans women in illegal and inhumane conditions. Uh, with the Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency. I support the National Center for Transgender Equality, which I also sit on the board of, uh, in helping their mission of getting legislative change done, right. Getting policy change done in order to make things across the board fair for all trans people. So, you know, I’ve, I’ve tried to donate a significant chunk of the money that I make in tech because I recognize not everyone makes the tech salary.

Kim Crayton: 04:03Okay. So you’ve just said so much. And that’s why I wanted to tease that out a bit because you, one of your introduction, you said “more fair”. And I put a question mark about that because that is the thing that keeps coming up because the status quo for those people who benefit from the status quo believe that that’s fair and that anyone who has been had at… and then they, it becomes a, a, a “conversation,” I’ll put that in quotes, because it usually becomes a debate on, or me, them trying to get me to justify why I am not, um, benefiting in the same way. Because “of course we’re all having the same experiences”. And so if you’re saying, um, that what the status quo is unfair then, then you’re trying to take something from me which will make it unfair for me.

Kim Crayton: 04:55 Um, so I want to talk about that and then I want to speak to specifically your advocacy and trans… in the trans community. I am so learning. So a bit weird: when I used to live in Chicago, I worked for a physician who actually, and I did not know him, this when he hired me. I was his receptionist – physician who, um, his office was for trans… Yeah. Transgender individuals. So they were coming there, there was a psychologist there who was giving counseling, all the pre stuff [note: “non-surgical” is preferred terminology]. There are people who come in and get hormones. And I didn’t even understand any of this until I got to know the young ladies. And I was like, wow, this is interesting. So this was back in the 90s when I first really had my exposure to…

Kim Crayton: 05:41 Yes, yes, yes. And so, um, so I’ve never been, so it always bothered me when people are like, oh, you know, um, I can tell… Like it, it makes absolutely no sense.

Kim Crayton: 05:51 I know some beautiful women that you would not be able to tell [note: this refers to trying to tell who’s cis/trans and only treating people who “pass” as their authentic gender, which are problematic]. They’re women, what are you talking about? Oh, so I had to, I was had that language earlier. But what I’m finding out now as I explore white supremacy and racism and oppression and all of this work is how connected I am to these communities because of my own experiences of oppression, particularly trans women of color and Black trans women who are being slaughtered. It’s I really want to insist I have someone on this show who is, ’cause I’ve had trans and, and that’s another thing I can tell you in the short time that I’ve been in this community either I’ve had, um, my, my percentage of transgender individuals who speak at my conferences or on my podcast, I am proud to say knocks most people out of the box because, and it’s not that I’m actively seeking individuals like yourself.

Kim Crayton: 06:47 It’s this is our community. And because I create safe spaces, you feel safe enough to come on. And so I’m really proud of myself and I can pat myself on the back when that, cause I really, so, I want to have a conversation about tech and, and and organizing and unethical crap there. But I definitely want to make sure we get into this transgender conversation because a lot, too much is going on that people don’t know about. So, um, I want to make sure we put those two things out there. So I have to say that I was fucking blown away. That’s your, that’s your salary. You can, you had $100,000 to give away. I was like, what the fuck? And that’s not even the, and that was just, that was just a paycheck.

Liz Fong-Jones: 07:30 That was one, that was about two months of my stock grants at Google. So it turns out that when you’re, especially when your skills are special, unique, that companies will pay a lot of money to have those skills. So the story of how I started getting somewhere in the order of like $50,000 a month, uh, out of Google comes from in 2015. Um, I was moving from Boston, New York, and I started looking around for companies. I wasn’t entirely happy with what I saw at Google then. Um, so I started looking around at companies and one company that interviewed me was Dropbox and Dropbox said, hey, you’ve worked on storage systems at Google before. We want help with building our own storage system. And they said, we’ll pay you $1 million over four years if you, if you help us do that. And I went to Google and I said, you know what, you’re paying me like $200,000 per year.

Liz Fong-Jones: 08:38Like Dropbox is offering to double that. Right? Like I would love to keep working for you, but you know, I’m not going to undersell myself if some, if that’s what my money’s worth on the market, then you know, my boss said, you know what, we would love to keep you. Let’s make it so it’s the work and not about the money. So they basically matched the offer and they are, and then I got a a letter to sign that said we’re giving you essentially $250,000 per year of stock and then Google stock doubled in the course of the four years. So, so that’s how I had my last two months worth of stock be worth $100,000.

Kim Crayton: 09:16And so this is where this I – this is where. Thank you for that because I’ll go, I’m fucking blown away as I’m trying to figure out where am I going to get the money for my next set of deals. Not jealous at all because you’ve earned that shit. What I am blown away from is the fact that you’re speaking about it because it’s communicates what the value is in tech. And I tell people all the time people put money cause that’s the one thing we can agree on that says value. And so when people say, Kim, why are you charging? Because what I bring to the table has value and this is, this is the only space. Tech is the only space I see that people from marginalized communities, the most vulnerable in our communities can level up and in a, in a way that they cannot do in these more traditional, very much status quo spaces.

Kim Crayton: 10:09So thank you so much about that because I am again, definitely not jealous about it. I’m so proud of you for doing that. I’m so proud of you speaks – for speaking out because that emboldens the rest of us to say fuck you. I’m asking for what, um, what I’m, what I deserve. So there is no shame in what my prices are and when I raised my prices because I am worth it. I bring value in, other people bring value and this is what this industry is willing to pay. It, it just takes us to say, hey, this is what somebody, because had you not gone there, you probably wouldn’t have known what somebody else,

Liz Fong-Jones: 10:43 No, I wouldn’t have known had I not interviewed around.

Kim Crayton: 10:45Yeah, exactly. And so, um, oh my God, I guess like we could have a whole nother conversation on how to do that, but okay, so, so with that said, so you had a hell of a lot of leverage because you had the financial stability to say, you know what, I’m going to walk on. What can you do about it? You know what? I’m going to leave this job and what can you do about it? So you that gives you freedom. And this is what people don’t get when you’re talking about more fair. The status quo has always had the leverage of having the, the benefits of the financial and networks that gave them the freedom to do the things that we’ve never had to do. And so now we’re coming into this space and we we’re at fuck, screw it. Cause I’m just like, my shirt says, “not asking permission, giving notice”.

Kim Crayton: 11:32 We’re giving notice that we’re in the space. You’re not getting rid of us and we’re going to fundamentally change the space so that more people can come in because it’s not just the right thing to do. It is right for business, period. So talk to me about how did you become this light–? I’m going to call you a lightning rod and if you don’t like that, just let me know. Um, and, and Google, because you have shaken up. You have caused some, some, some, some, some struggle there. Um, good trouble on our end, but um your voice. How did your voice rise? So I see the, how the financial thing came about, but how did your voice, yeah, how did you leverage your voice in this conversation?

Liz Fong-Jones: 12:09 I think it’s two pieces though, right? Like, you know, I, when I started doing activism in 2010, I didn’t have quite as much leverage. Right. But the thing that I had was I knew what it was like to be homeless. Right. I knew what it was like to have $100 in my bank account and be like, oh no, I’m not sure if I can afford food. Right? Like, I’ve had that experience. I knew I couldn’t possibly get that bad, even if I instantaneously lost my job. Right.

Kim Crayton: 12:36 So it wasn’t hypothetical for you. It wasn’t like theory. It was, I know what this is and I know what it is.

Liz Fong-Jones: 12:41 Yeah. So when I was prepared to say, you know what, fuck you right, like to to the, uh, to the real names policy at Google, I knew that even if they fired me, like I’d be fine. Like I could get another job. It wouldn’t be as bad as being homeless. Right. And I think that that really kind of, I mean, to think about what can I do to help other people and especially what can I do in order to make sure that people who are trans women, people who are gay, people who are like exploring themselves, people who are closeted and need that space, right. To explore and figure out, you know, who am I and what support do I have? Right? If the entire Internet became real names only, I knew that that was going to be in danger. And that’s why I knew I had to speak up was because otherwise I knew that the next generation of trans women, of trans men, of non-binary people, of LGB, people like that, those people were in danger if the entire world became like Facebook. And it was like, you must use your legal name only. Right?

Kim Crayton: 13:42 Yeah. That’s one of the things. So when I, when I, I’m always thinking strategically. So when I decided that, well not decided, when I just kinda got sucked into this whole activism thing. Um, I went to, some of the people were following me. These infotech security people and started, “hey, what do I need to do to clean up some of this stuff that is about me online so that I’m not doxxed or whatever”. And I found that I could do everything except for on Facebook. And that’s why I’m not on Facebook. That’s why I’ve asked, had to ask my family members to, to deselect me as a family member and the friends that de-select me as all these things and to get rid of and to have fam Facebook literally be just friends and family because they will not let me change my name. Um, and I do not want people to be able to find me or my family through that, that platform. And when you don’t have, when you’re a part of the status quo, you’re not a part of the communities that are most are targeted for this stuff. So you don’t think about that.

Liz Fong-Jones: 14:41Right. Exactly. And the thing that was ironic was the people leading this project within Google, the Google+ project said, oh, real names are going to curb abuse because no one would be abusive under their real names. But if you allow all of these random names, then you know, who knows what might happen. And I was like, dude, really, white supremacists feel perfectly comfortable being white supremacist and harassing people of color under their real names, right? Like, no, this does not provide safety to any of us.

Kim Crayton: 15:09 And even before we got online, that was very obvious. Um, you had the Klu Klux Klan who covered their faces, but there are very, a lot of people who had no problem with getting in positions of power and using that power to leverage it against more vulnerable communities.

Liz Fong-Jones: 15:24Yeah, exactly. Right. So it was so ignorant of the people leading that project, that were, you know, people who are in the majority, who were like, you know, yeah.

Kim Crayton: 15:33 And who’ve never been taught. And this is why I’m, I’m having, I have major issues with these, um, women, women coding things and women in tech, things that are run by predominantly cis white women. Um, because what it turns into, is white feminism in these places, spaces that you’ve said are safe for women of color. Um, trans women, [non-]binary individuals actually are not, uh, because of your own blindnesses and blind spots. You, you are actually actively engaging in white supremacist behavior. And this is where the [inaudible], and then it pisses me off

Kim Crayton: 16:19Yeah. And then it’s, it also pisses me off because as we said at the top of the show, the ability that you created for yourself, the spaces and, and how you’ve leveraged your income, these, these women are coming into this space believing that because they’re the buying the PR, the PR, believing that these spaces are are safe and they even leave before they even get to the job because these spaces have turned them and then they leave tech because this is just not where I want to be. So this is, that’s where pisses me off because when you’re talking about the pipeline, which is a bullshit, it’s getting, when people decide to transition into tech and you have these groups who are putting themselves out as supportive of these marginalized groups and they’re causing the harm, these individuals do not, cannot make the, the, the switch between [inaudible] this is white feminism. No, this is tech and it’s obviously not good for me or it’s not right for me. And so I leave. And so we leave those voices as they even come through the door.

Liz Fong-Jones: 17:17 Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. And then once they get there, right? Like it’s just so sexist and so racist, right? Like it’s incredibly frustrating. And you know, every time I talk about, you know, this is how much money I made, right. But for every me, like there, there are five people who didn’t get those right set of opportunities or got driven out before they could get there. Right. So it’s not all sunshine and roses,

Kim Crayton: 17:38 but not only that, because every one of you, there are 20 white dudes who got it and didn’t have to ask for it. They just got it. And so that’s the status quo. That’s the status quo. And that’s why I’m so proud of you to see that a woman is doing that and a woman who’s not saying you gotta lean in and you got to do these things and you got to assimilate with someone who just was always a bad ass. Because I’m just going to put it out here as a trans woman of color making that you are making that kind of money. You are such an anomaly, but yet you are, um, as, as, as Coraline Ada since she’s like, she’s like, I’m a woman who can code, you know, I am the white supremacists’ worst nightmare, but she’s a white transgender woman. But a woman of color, a transgender, a woman of color, and still rock and roll with the best of the mediocre white dudes who are an epitome of everything they, they don’t, they don’t want. And that’s why I’m so proud of you.

Liz Fong-Jones: 18:38 Yeah. Yeah. But at same time, right? Like that’s why I get so much hate, right? I get racist hate. I get transphobic hate. I get, yeah, sexist hate, right? Like all these things come together.

Kim Crayton: 18:47Yes, yes. And so, um, again, this is where cause Cora, she calls it being kin. And this is what I, I’ve, I feel such a kinship with transgender women because black women are just like at the bottom of the posts on the pole. And when I look around to who I can lend my privilege to, it’s unfortunate, but it’s trans women and trans women of color. Um, and you’ve, and you to me have demonstrated that it’s possible to, to be successful even in the hate and the vitriol and all that other stuff that you’re dealing with. You still can rock and roll and you still have your community that, um, that supports you and looks out for you because we were supposed to do this episode, um, a month ago, and you had to say, “Hey, I’m tired. I’m burnt out a little bit”. And I was like, do you, boo. Do, take care of, make sure you take care of yourself because it means absolutely nothing if the people who are on the front line are just worn out.

Liz Fong-Jones: 19:41Yeah. Yeah, totally. Like that was the week that I was told that, hey, you know, you thought you were leaving on Google on February 25th actually, you’re too inconvenient. We’re going to push you out the door on January 29th right?

Kim Crayton: 19:53 Mmm, yeah. And see this is with, see, this is where, again, I love that you were in a Google and nothing to say about smaller companies, but everybody Google this, you know, Google has a name, it has a brand. And so to have someone inside who can refute, Oh, who can challenge the narrative that Google is doing everything they can to make it a safe space for everybody, it’s needed because they have the leverage of being on every platform. They have the leverage of the backers of VC and, and all this other stuff to, to, to tout and to promote their message. But it takes,

Liz Fong-Jones: 20:32Yeah, they have like all the money in the world, right. And yet they’re doing such a bad job of actually changing their culture because it turns out that that costs more than they’re willing to spend. And that’s unfortunate.

Kim Crayton: 20:42 Exactly. In that, it, it, it, and this is what, so I retweeted, the other day, Gucci after their debacle with the blackface are looking, are looking for D&I people. And I’m like, if you believe, if you, if your mental health and your physical and emotional health is important to you, please do not apply for these bullshit jobs because they’re not going to put any resources behind you. They’re not going to put any, uh, you’re not going to have any authority. You’re going to be beating yourself against the head because these are not D&I issues. These are leadership freaking issues. And if the leadership doesn’t change and, and, and fashion is fundamentally racist and sexist, then you are just going to be worn out and then they can say, “Oops, checked that box. We tried and it didn’t work.”

Kim Crayton: 21:28 Is that uh, we, we tried that thing and it didn’t work. Um, yeah. So tell me how the, so when I saw the article of the, I don’t even know what department he was in, the guy who got all the millions to leave because he was harassing…

Kim Crayton: 21:44 and, and, and it. So it seems that Google employees found out the same time that the mass public found out about this information.

Liz Fong-Jones: 21:53 Yep. More or less, I knew a couple months early because I was especially plugged in, but yeah. Yeah. Most Google employees found out the day the New York Times article dropped.

Kim Crayton: 22:01So from the time that the article dropped, and I want to talk us through this because I want to give an example of how you, the Google employees, um, um, got together and how they planned this because people need to see, hear the story so that they can replicate it because it makes no sense for us to do these things if we can’t scale them. So the article drops, what happens next?

Liz Fong-Jones: 22:22So there’s a fantastic article in the New York magazine, uh, by the walkout organizers. Funnily enough, I’m not one of the walkout organizers. And I think that that’s kind of an accomplishment that what I started is now fully self sustaining without me. Right? But they used the same techniques that I used for uh, over the nine years that I was an activist from in Google, from 2010 to 2019. Right? Like you start a Google doc, you start a Google group and you say, you know what? Anyone who is interested in participating in this and writing down ideas, write down your ideas, right? So in my case, it started with the Google+ real names thing where I said, you know what? This is awful. Here are all the people would impact. Let’s write this list down. You know, let’s put it down, let’s put down in text so that everyone can see how long this list is of what reasons why this shit is wrong, right?

Liz Fong-Jones: 23:11And then you get like, you know, 50 people, a hundred people, 200 people contributing to that and saying, you know what? I want to organize this. And then after that you get thousands of people to sign on and say, you know what? I maybe don’t have the ability to support you in terms of organizing, but I’m behind you. Right. To sign their names to this and say, you know what, I stand behind my coworkers. Right. That same pattern has happened over and over and over again at Google. Right? It’s happened over and over again so much that I don’t have to be there for it to happen. So the walkout organizers started a Google group started a Google document and how they planned the walkout.

Kim Crayton: 23:46Okay. I see. Two things I see. I see this is a double edge sword because it’s great that it’s now a part of the system, but it, it, it alarms me that Google has had, had so many issues that it’s now become a part of the system.

Liz Fong-Jones: 24:00 I agree. On the other hand, every single other company is struggling with this and instead of confronting it, they didn’t… People just have to sit and live and people will have to just sit and, and accept that this is going on. Right. Like, you know, and I think that that’s, that’s a problem.

Kim Crayton: 24:18 It’s telling of our communities, telling of our industry because like I know Google is not the only one. And I, and I guess I could, I can applaud the leadership in the fact that at least, um, how do I say this because I don’t want to say it loud. You guys do it. How do you, how do I, what am I? Because what I’m trying to say,

Liz Fong-Jones: 24:42 that’s a funny word, right? Like it’s interesting because Google actually filed a legal brief with the National Labor Relations Board arguing against employees being able to use work communication systems to organize, right? They filed this brief in mid-November, two weeks after the Google walkout. They filed a brief saying, you know what? We’re not, we don’t actually support the use of our communication systems to do this. Right. So one hand…

Kim Crayton: 25:05There’s a bunch of fucking… your communication systems are ubiquitous throughout the world at this point.

Liz Fong-Jones: 25:10 Yeah. Right. Like, you know, if they could do this to us, then they could, then it would send a really injust precedent. Right? Like everyone who uses email and use documents could have their employer crack down on this, right? You know, Google wouldn’t reach into another employer, right. Unless that employer’s leadership said, you know what, crack down on this. Right? And that’s what we’re afraid of.

Kim Crayton: 25:31 That. And that’s just so interesting because again, you have the status quo of these individuals creating these platforms who have this naivete about connecting the world. And we want to, we want to make everything special for everyone else and making them, but when they recognize that their product or service, it’s actually causing harm. This is the reality that they don’t want to face,

Liz Fong-Jones: 25:54 right? It’s, it’s weird, right? Like it’s, you know, connect the world, but oh, not like that. Don’t use it to overturn the status quo, but you know, oh, let’s connect the world. Oh, people are getting harassed. Well, I guess that’s an unfortunate side effect, right? Like it’s, it’s such a double standard.

Kim Crayton: 26:09Um, and you can say, I’m going to, I’m going to put this in here and um, and if you say no live, then we will cut it out. I’m just going to say this, so don’t worry about it. Are you willing to speak as a person who was inside Google when the manifesto came out?

Liz Fong-Jones:26:23 I unfortunately, am in the situation of, this lawsuit has been going on now for over a year and James Damore has sued Google, uh, both in terms of his employment agreement and also in terms of a class action lawsuit on behalf of similarly situated people, and he has sued Google and he also has the potential to add other defendants to the case, I believe until April. So unfortunately I’m in a position where I can’t discuss things that relate to the manifesto. And I think that that’s a silencing effect where, you know, people are using the legal system to argue that upsetting the status quo is discriminating against white men. Right. And I think that that is a unfortunate situation and that’s about as much as I can say to this issue.

Kim Crayton: 27:15Well, and that’s all you need to say because it speaks volumes to me. So I’m going to leave that there. Um, wow. So, so then why did you decide, let’s talk about why did you decide to leave Google after, after nine years, the walkout happened. Um, you said you gave them a end date and then they said, no, it’s going to be a little earlier than that. So why did you decide to leave Google?

Liz Fong-Jones: 27:39I realized that I was too burnt out. I had to take care of myself first. And that meant that I had to find somewhere else to work that was less toxic. Um, that there’s only so much, I think I put it in writing this way, that, you know, if you’re bailing out, uh, you know, if you’re bailing out a raft with a teaspoon and the people that are steering it keep punching holes in the raft, like, that, that’s not really a healthy and sustainable situation. You know, maybe you get other people to bail, you know, to, to scoop with teaspoons. Maybe you get people to agitate, to change the leadership. But you know, at the end of the day you still have to bail out the raft. And that takes energy. And I was just sick and tired of doing that. So, and the signs that led me to believe that leadership was not going to stop punching holes in the raft. That’s what caused me to, to say, you know what, I can’t keep doing this in the long term. Right. The fact that with the Google walkout, you know, they issued five demands and Google basically halfway met one of them and that’s all they did, right? They halfway met one of them, they halfway met another and they left the other three untouched.

Kim Crayton:28:42Yeah. And that’s how I feel about education because I was an educator and I’m still an educator, but certified and um, and people are like, why are you such a great educator, a teacher? Why did you leave? Because that system is does, too many people profiting off the failure of the education system and there’s no way without dismantling the whole system and starting all over again in a more ethical manner, was I ever going to make any impact? So my 30 kids or 40 kids or whatever, it didn’t mean anything to me. It wasn’t a big enough scale for me. I wasn’t able to touch enough.

Liz Fong-Jones: 29:18Absolutely, right. It, it is 100% about scale. That’s the same reason I gave up being a manager, right? I was a manager within Google for two years, kind of working more quietly within the system because as a manager, you’re not allowed to advocate for overturning the system, right? You don’t have those labor protections and I realized I could make life wonderful for 12 people, but I couldn’t actually fix things for the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people across the tech industry, across the company.

Liz Fong-Jones: 30:36 … things for the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people across the tech industry, across the company.

Kim Crayton: 30:41 Yeah. And that’s the thing. It’s like if it can’t, cause when I say like with #CauseAScene, my strategy at first was to focus on, um, so I tell people I’m not here to convince a convert. I’m here to help educate those white people who recognize or anybody who recognize that they’re complicit that their, their either intentional or unintentional behaviors and mindsets are complicit. And so I initially last year when I launched this, had focused on white men and I quickly shifted, particularly after the midterms to white women because I spend a same amount of energy if I’m going to spend the same amount of energy, um, um, educating, I need there to be some action and white women when they get it will work because they’re women. Um, and I know some men gonna get pissed off about this, but once I could do the same thing with white men and they continue to say, look, so what do I do next?

Kim Crayton: 31:32And so what do I do next? And then I’m like, I don’t have the bandwidth to keep doing this. Um,

New Speaker: 31:39Yeah, yeah. In the end because that’s what they’re used to. And I, I don’t, and I also, as a black woman, I don’t have the patience for it. I’m just like, no, I just don’t have the patience for you to get it. Uh, again, I gave it to you three different ways. You said you understood it. I can explain it again, but you know what, but you need to be doing something too. And see, that’s the thing. It’s, it’s not, it’s the, we’re all trying to say this all the time. We’re all trying to create a world that, an experience that was never meant to happen. You asked if, if this country had its way I would still be a slave, um, and you definitely would not exist. Um, and so, we’re all trying to create something that was not meant to happen and it takes people to get to, to grieve, to feel the pain, but to keep moving forward because we’re all feeling it. Just like you say your burnout. I have to do it on regular basis of stepping away of doing whatever I can because this is, I find what, what white people are missing in the work, that, that, their, in their work that they’re doing on behalf of upsetting the status quo. They’re not also, so they have the…

Kim Crayton: 32:49They’re not also, um, trying to, um, deal with the trauma of what we’re learning and what we’re experiencing every day. So it’s like you just have this theoretical part of it. We have the theoretical and the practical part. So every time I hear a story about a trans woman being killed, that’s something I have to internally I have to process because it’s like, oh fuck, this shit is just happening and they really have no protection. And then I’m starting to think of how can I protect and I don’t, you know, it’s this whole thing which is burnt out, burnout. And this is why I, I said this system has to be overturned by white people. But you cannot lead these initiatives. You do not have the forethought to lead. What you need to do is let the people who are most vulnerable do the work and you lend your privilege and your access and your networks and your finances doing whatever the hell it is so that we can get this done.

Liz Fong-Jones: 33:43Yeah, I 100% agree. And I think that that’s really that precarious thing, right? Like it can’t be an abstract problem to you, but the thing if it’s personal, frankly, then it leads to you being more and more involved until you burn out. Right? So I think all of us as activists have to really struggle with this and figure out like what’s the right mixture?

Kim Crayton: 34:00And it changes on a daily basis. And that’s the thing. It’s like it changes on a daily basis. Um, so, um, before we transition into, and we’ll probably get back, but I really want to spend some time on the trans issue because there’s so many things with the military. Um, man with the, I saw that, um, actually today that I think American Airlines is now accepting the, um, the “X” as the gender.

Liz Fong-Jones: 34:27Yeah. All the major American airlines are finally doing it. Not just American Airlines, but Delta and United. Yeah.

Kim Crayton: 34:32Yeah. I just saw the article today for American, so, um, so that’s great to know. Um, and then I saw, I think it was South Dakota gimme a second. Um,

Kim Crayton: 34:47Yes, yes. So that came out. And so you have these like one step forward and then 10 steps backwards and these steps backwards are pain or I’ll let you speak to that because I’m not, and I don’t, I all, I can, my, my strategy for trends for the trans community because to me in the LGBTQ, they’re the, the ones to me that are most vulnerable at this point, um, now people are going to disagree, but I don’t give a fuck. This is what my opinion is. And so I want to leverage my privilege to amplify your message. So I want you to just talk about what you’re seeing and how people can help and whatever.

Liz Fong-Jones: 35:30 Yeah. So I joined the board of the National Center for Transgender Equality in the end of 2017 and at that point, the Trump administration had been in office for about a year. And what the executive director, Mara, said to me is basically, you know, what our strategy is to, is to delay, to block, to stall and you know, do everything we can to stop and slow the rollback of rights. Right. You know, it’ll happen. But you know, even if we buy people an extra three months, an extra six months, right? Then that then that is doing really good work, right? Even resisting the system is in fact an accomplishment, right? And it makes them less willing to keep doing this if they know every single time they roll back one of our rights, that’s going to take them six months or 12 months. That’s when you result in comment periods and litigation, right?

Liz Fong-Jones: 36:24It means they’re not going to roll back all of the rules at once, right. And instead they’re going to have to fight us on every single one. And that’s what she said to me. And I’ve seen that strategy work, right? Now, yes. Kavanaugh got nominated to the Supreme Court. Right. You know, all these things happen, but you know, there are some successes, right? Like one or two of the federal judges got blocked because of their extreme LG… anti-LGBT views. Right. You know, it’s one or two. Right. You know, but it’s not zero. Right. And I think that that means that our organizations that are fighting for LGBT+ rights are in fact doing their jobs as best as they can. And then there are states where you can make progress, right? States where they now allow to, where they now allow non-binary gender markers on your driver’s licenses, right? Like you know, states where the, where you can, uh, have formal protections in the law for trans students to use the appropriate bathrooms. Right? Those are all things that we can celebrate at the same time as we’re also celebrating that things are not rolling back quite as fast as would otherwise happen.

Kim Crayton:37:30 And I love that because I’m always trying to be an optimist in this and all of this because if not, I, I’m not, I can’t live on pessimism. That’s just not in my nature, I’d just be a shit show. Um, so I always have to find something, to something to hold onto that says that what I’m doing has value and it means something. I guess that’s what it is. And when I’m doing something has to have a meaning. I’m not just out here just doing it just to, to, to, um, for whatever reasons, it has to have some meaning and it has to have some impact. And that’s why scale is so important to me. And, and, and strategy, I see it all the time. Intention without strategy is chaos. So if the strategy is to just slow it down, that’s a strategy and if it works, that’s it. Because if you slow it down long enough or enough of it, at some point, his, his, his tenure’s going to be going, is going to be over.

Liz Fong-Jones: 38:21Right? Like we’re minimizing the damage he can do. Yep.

Kim Crayton: 38:24Yes. And um, and I think that’s what a lot of communities are where a lot of communities are at this point. It’s like, okay, let’s count down. So the 2020 is coming, okay, God forbid it goes to 2024, but what can we do in that time? And, and then I don’t even want to just point it to him because he’s just like the, the, the head of the pimple because this has been going on for so long that if it weren’t, he wouldn’t even be in office. This has been, um, how the, the, the, the dismantling of, I guess it’s just the humanity and that’s why I find such kinship in transgender individuals because black women have always been, we have not been able to own our own bodies, our own voices, our own, um, in feminism we were left out in, in, in, in black movements, we were left out because of misogyny, um, so it’s like every turn I really can understand the, what I don’t have in the way that trans women is the violence against you and your identity as men or women that you choose to be. That’s the piece that I don’t have and I want to make sure that I never say that I speak for you because that’s a com…, that’s a component of that violence that is so different that it just blows my, I’m just horrified at the levels of violence that are, um, that are sanctioned. That as people are saying, it’s justified.

Liz Fong-Jones: 39:58Yeah. Right. I think that it’s really interesting to see the ways that the movement overlaps between trans people and between Black people. Right? Like when, when we looked at who worked with the trans community to oppose HB2, the bathroom bill in North Carolina, right? It was the NAACP that said, we’re not going to support bathroom segregation. Right. We’ve been through this. We know what it’s like to have people police who can use which bathroom. Right. I think that that was a fundamental moment to see, you know, what, there is solidarity here. Right? And I think the thing that I tell, right. And because I work in tech, I know a bunch of trans folks, but they’re mostly white, you know, 90% of the trans folks I know in tech are white. And the thing that I say is, you know what, look, the NAACP is standing behind trans people, what have you done for Black people today? Right. Like, you know, right, we gotta act together!

Kim Crayton: 40:53and that’s the only way the oppressed gets the numbers and the power to have the voice. Because if we don’t get that together, we don’t get there at all.

Kim Crayton: 41:05 Oh wow. Then that, that just sent chills, because that’s a question that I have been starting to see because what I’ve been seeing in the white transgender individuals who follow me, white transgender women is they’re struggling with the fact, uh, with the issues of losing the privilege of being [perceived as] a white man.

Kim Crayton: 41:35Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s a conversation that I have a few. Um, and, and again, it’s so interesting that transgender individuals are, or I’ve created a safe space because I have several DM conversations going on at anytime, uh, when they’re recognizing, particularly transgender women who are, you know, now having to see things through the eyes of a woman, um, that they’ve never seen before. And they’re processing that. And again, it’s what, again, what are you doing for the women of color?

Liz Fong-Jones: 42:05Yeah. Yeah. And that’s kind of part of what I’m excited about with my work with NCTE, right. Like, is we have a board that has no black people on it. And I think that that’s a problem, right? Like, you know, and that’s something that I’m like, okay, what are we doing to fix this? Right? Or like, you know, what can we do to make sure that the leadership of NCTE has enough people of color on it, right. To represent our constituency, right? Like those are things that I think are really, really important and that I can, you know, simultaneously both be an ally to the Black community, but also as a person of color there, I feel this too, right. Like that, we have to make sure that the movement is not just, you know, led by white people.

Liz Fong-Jones: 42:52Yeah. Right. And that’s why it is really exciting to me to see stuff like NCTE standing up for sex worker rights. Right. Because that is the profession that a lot of trans people, especially trans people of color do, is that they are sex workers and that if you have SESTA and FOSTA that result in them not being able to safely work, that’s a problem for the trans community, right. And the fact that they stood up and they were the one voice on Capitol Hill saying yes, like, you know, this is an issue that’s important to us. Right. Kamala Harris, why are you doing this? Right?

Kim Crayton: 43:27Mhm. Oh, wow. So, okay. So I believe I gave money to two of the organizations last year and it was… Again, my ignorance, I don’t know the name of it, but the two you mentioned.

Kim Crayton: 43:41Yeah. One was the legal fund and one… Yeah. Um, and what else can I do? Because I know my $5 here and there is not, well, it’s doing something. I’m not going to discount my value. Um, it’s doing something. At least I have that, but what can I do and I particularly what can I do for, for women of color, transgender women of color.

Liz Fong-Jones: 44:00I think that the main thing that you can do that you’ve already been speaking up against is like the police oppression of people of color, but especially of trans people of color. Right? That’s a huge issue and that’s something that we can make a difference on if we act locally and we pressure our police departments to stop persecuting people on the basis of, of race on the basis of their transgender status. Right. There’s the case in New York City of a trans woman who was arrested for providing a false identity when she told the officers why the name on her ID didn’t match the name that she uses. She was accused of using a false name. Right? And it’s the violence against our communities by the police that that’s, that’s a major issue that we can work on.

Kim Crayton: 44:48 Okay, cool. Because I’m becoming more aware because of, um, Elizabeth Epps, I’m becoming more aware of just the criminal justice, um, and how like, um, bond and bail works and this is all, and this is why I guess I’m, I’m, I have to, when I say I have to take a step back because as I’m learning, it’s learning about really traumatic things, um, it’s like totally shifting my paradigm so much that it’s like, I don’t, it’s definitely, I have to take a step back and just try to figure out what, where does this piece of new information fit in with the rest of the bullshit that’s going on and, and how do, and how do, what role do I play? Or is this something that, you know what I just say, I just, this one I can’t do and I have to leave to some other things because there’s a number of those things. Um, and so I’ve focused where I can, and it’s definitely in these communities that are more vulnerable than I am. And I’m seeing just like a, someone from El Salvador just got deported, um, and was killed when she got back.

Kim Crayton: 45:54Yeah. Um, and it’s, it’s, those things that are just demoralizing, but there’s, there has to be such grace and beauty in, in, in release in, in finally figuring out a way to stand up in your own identity.

Liz Fong-Jones: 46:13Yeah. And for me, right, like that is I want to build the capacity of the movement, right. I am demonstrating like, hi, I’m here, I’m making money and I’m giving it away. Right? And that’s a message that I repeat in order to make sure that people think, right, how much can I give? Right? How much can I express solidarity people and give back to the community? Right. That’s the thing that I keep on pushing on.

Kim Crayton: 46:36 Yeah. And, and that’s, uh, that’s amazing. That is absolutely amazing. Um, I did want to thank you for talking, because when I have people from communities that I’m not a part of, I like for them to tell their own stories because that’s, we need to hear directly from you. I want to talk about though the, um, like the tech coalition, I can’t think of the name. It’s the

Liz Fong-Jones: 47:03Um, yeah. It’s not the TWC that’s going to be administering the fund, but yes. Um, I am working with a labor, uh, organizing group in order to make sure that we can create a strike fund.

Kim Crayton: 47:17Okay. Well I was just speaking of them because their their, their their messages about unionizing and, and, and all these other things. What, hm, what is your, what is your, let’s, let’s dream here. What is your dream in five years that all these efforts around workers rights, what would that look like for you?

Liz Fong-Jones: 47:40 I think that we need to have meaningful controls on the executives who run these companies who are majority white or Asian men, right. And that we need to make sure that employees can push back when they do something that hurts marginalized communities where they put profit above marginalized communities. And I think that that means that there is regulatory pressure. It means that there will be some lawsuits. Right?

Kim Crayton: 48:08Oh, I say that all the time. Lack of inclusion as a risk management issue. And now, and it’s going to take lawsuits. It’s going to take liability cases for people, for these companies to really, these leadership leaders to really start taking this stuff seriously.

Liz Fong-Jones: 48:21Right. But I also think, right, like, you know, as problematic as she is, Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to say, you know what, the model in Germany works co-determination where employees and employee representatives sit on a board and make up 40% of the board, right. That works as a control to say you’re not going to pull this shit over, right. That we can work in order to, with the investors in order to force the company to be more inclusive.

Kim Crayton: 48:46 It’s interesting because I mean, and I want to talk to you about this cause you just, something just popped in my head and I want to talk through this. So when I’m looking at, uh, union at Chrysler, it was all about employees only. It was not about the broader perspective, but what we’re talking about are not only employee protections, but the employee’s ability to protect the, uh, global consumer, which is a diff, which is an additional layer.

Liz Fong-Jones: 49:15Yes, correct. Yes. That is something that hasn’t really been explored much. Right? That one of the interesting corner cases that we’re encountering now is that while it is legally protected for us to speak about working conditions. It’s less legally protected for us to talk, to whistle blow about issues that are uninclusive products.

Kim Crayton: 49:34 and see that’s what’s, and that’s what’s gonna be the thing that tech has to fix and this is where, and this is why, again, I’m optimistic because I’m in a tech space in the tech space and tech is leading all of this stuff. No one’s having these conversations like we’re having these conversations…

Liz Fong-Jones: 49:49On the other hand, no one is hurting communities at such a scale as we are.

Kim Crayton: 49:53That’s true, but these other, these other communities have been just doing it longer and once we get this, get a formula that works, that scales. Medicine’s going to have to change. Law’s going to have to change. All these other industries are going to have to shift because now there’s a model for how to be inclusive and how to mitigate harm and how to think about this as a risk management issue. This is what I just don’t get where this will add… Do not slap it. I am not a D I. I am not an inclusion and diversity specialist. I’m a business strategist and I talk about these things because inclusion and diversity, is a part of a strategy is not, and, if you are not, I don’t understand why it’s so different then the HR person who only uses a computer to fill in forms and there’s nothing against that because the computer person, the person who wrote the program can’t do the doggone, can’t fill out the forms. So I don’t understand why it’s just such this, this hard nose ignorance that these are things that need to be strategy and that’s something that’s slapped on top of something once there’s problems and once there’s harm out there because you’re right, we’re harming at a scale that’s never been seen before.

Liz Fong-Jones: 51:03 Yeah, and I think that, you know, other efforts that are in parallel that are happening in the legal system, right? Your public defenders that are saying, you know what my case load is not defensible. I’m not able to provide effective defense to people I’m defending, right? And law students are saying, we’re not going to work for big law firms unless they support certain worker protections. Right. So I think that it’s starting to spread, but I think that it’s going to take time. It’s going to take us talking about the successes in order to make it actually happen.

Kim Crayton: 51:32Exactly. And being transparent about these successes. Uh, I’m working on the board of, of a women’s organization that’s about to launch and we, our idea is we’re going to, we’re trying to open source it so that we’re not the only, that we’re not holding anything special. Um, but we’re going to show you how to be able to intersectional, um, organization in tech. This is what we’re going to be doing. Um, and we’re going to lay out a, except for if there’s any proprietary information, we’re going to lay out how to do this because every organization is different and meets the different needs of the needs of the community. And the more of these organizations we have, the better we are. Um, and the more individuals like yourself who have the leverage of the, the, the, you know, the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You have that survival thing taken care of.

Kim Crayton: 52:26Then you, and this, this is where, and this is where I’m always transparent, the organization with the community, when there’s money coming in for me, they see a difference. Tenor, um, um, Tone, in my, they hear a different tone in what I do. When I’m looking at the bank account go down is when I start that, you know, my basic needs aren’t being taken care of. So now I’ve got to focus on that. And then I have anxiety, which means I don’t have the energy or the emotional space to deal with the stuff that I see that I could be doing.

Liz Fong-Jones: 52:56 Yeah. And that’s why I think the strike fund is so fundamental, right, is that it addresses that basic need so people can feel comfortable to do that activism. Yeah.

Kim Crayton: 53:03So how do you then in that question, that case, how do you, would you say we, we do that or individuals like myself do that because I’m not in a company. I, I specifically decided to build my own thing because I know, knew once I started speaking that I couldn’t work for another company and that was just not gonna work for me. Um, so what, what, do you have any, any best practices for us about how the individuals who are doing, cause the people outside of these jobs who are doing the activism? We’re the ones that was really, I mean let’s, we’re, we’re struggling. I’m not getting a direct deposit on the fifth and the first 15th in the first of every month. I’m relying on this community to say, hey, you’re, what you’re doing is valuable. I’ll, you know, just consulting or my company needs. That’s what, what, what have you learned that’s within the company that people like myself who are outside of the company but need that same protection? Um, anything you have about that?

Liz Fong-Jones: 54:01 I think that there are two lenses to look at this through. One lens is to talk about the general picture of whose voices are represented at the table when we have these labor organizing conversations and a lot of them unfortunately ignore the contractors and vendors who make up 50% of our workforces in tech companies. Right. I think that we have to express solidarity and say, you know what? We can fight at the same time that we fight for equality of pay between different genders and races. We can also talk about, you know what? Maybe companies should be paying, you know, not net 30 or net 60 right? But paying people on time. Right. We can talk about things like that. We can talk about contractor diversity, right? We can talk about, you know, right, it is… We have laws that say that you cannot discriminate in hiring, however, you can have a program to improve the diversity of your contractors. Right? You can say, we’re going to allocate this pot of money just for Black companies… Black owned companies or just for women-owned companies. Right. I think that that’s an effort given that you know, it upsets the status quo, and it also is not going to subject you to legal risk, right?

Liz Fong-Jones: 55:11That you can say, we have a diversity effort. We’re going to put more of our contract work out to people who are, who are minorities. And then I also think that we have to, you know, push to include in terms of having people be a part of these conversations, right? To say, you know what, our employee resource groups need to include people who are contractors, right. Part of the trap that we discovered was happening at Google was Google had all of these rules to prevent contractors from socializing with full time employees, which means we never heard about all the crap they’re pulling over. Right.

Kim Crayton: 55:44Ah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So you didn’t know, they weren’t allowed to tell their story. So you had the privilege of having the safety again as another level of privilege. You had the privilege of Google. Um, but, but you didn’t hear, they silenced the people who were being, who were most vulnerable.

Liz Fong-Jones: 56:03Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Like we found out because, uh, this, this is someone you should have on your show, by the way, if you haven’t had Demma Rosa Rodriguez on your show, she’s an amazing Black woman.

Kim Crayton: 56:13Make sure you give me her information. So I can reach out to her.

Liz Fong-Jones: 56:16Yeah. But like Demma found out from one of her friends who was a cafeteria worker that they had these onerous rules that were like, you can’t speak Spanish to your coworkers. You can’t, you can’t have your hair tied a certain way at work, which is now illegal in New York City by the way. You can’t have, you can’t have your cell phone on you even if your kid gets sick or your kid falls down. Right? Like you can’t have your cell phone on you at work. Right. All these onerous rules and we found out about it only because of that friendship. Right. Because the contract workers weren’t allowed on our mailing lists. The contract workers weren’t allowed to otherwise socialize outside of working hours on work campus.

Kim Crayton: 56:50And think about that. Who are you to say who can socialize with someone? That right there is just like, eh.

Liz Fong-Jones: 56:56 Yeah, yeah. They were saying that you can’t be on campus outside of your work shift if you’re a contractor and that was bullshit.

Kim Crayton: 57:02Wow. I’ve learned so much with, thank you so much for coming on. Are there any last words you have? This has been very, very enlightening for me. It was a good day. Any, any last words or things you’d like to share?

Liz Fong-Jones: 57:15I think the thing that I’d like to share is like we have to stand up for what’s right and we have to do that in an intersectional way. That we can’t just stand up for ourselves, that we have to build that solidarity. Like you said earlier, right, we don’t have the numbers alone, right? That we, if we work together, we can actually accomplish change. And I’m really proud of what I’ve built at Google, even though it eventually burned me out. Like I’m proud of what I built. It’s going to continue and now I’m off. You know, I’m off, uh, supporting a business that is two, that two women started. Right, supporting an organization that is upsetting the status quo just by the fact that it’s owned by that it’s owned by women. Right. Like that’s really powerful to me.

Kim Crayton: 57:56Good. Good. Good for you. I’m so happy that we finally were able to have this conversation. Um, I’ve been feeling a little down lately and I can tell you this conversation’s just put a smile on my heart. Um, it helps boost…

Kim Crayton: 58:22 Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the #causeascene podcast. I’d like to again thank Tito for their support of #causeascene and encourage you to learn more about their amazing products at their website, ti.to. If you’re interested in supporting the #causeascene movement, podcast, conference, or anything else, feel free to email us directly at support@hashtagcauseascene.com. Are you bold enough to wear your commitment to improving inclusion and diversity for all? If so, check out the #causeascene merchandise at our website at hashtagcauseascene.com. On behalf of everyone here at #causeascene we’d like to thank you again for listening to today’s show.